Liudmyla Baran > Liudmyla's Quotes

“You sea! I resign myself to you also-
I guess what you mean,
I behold from the beach your crooked fingers,
I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me.
We must have a turn together,
I undress, hurry me out of sight of the land,
Cushion me soft, rock me billowy drowse,
Dash me with amorous wet, I can repay you.”
― Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

“Prawda jest jak sękacz, składa się z wielu warstw, które kręcą się wokół siebie, raz siebie zawierają, a raz same są zawierane przez inne. Prawda to jest coś, co można wyrażać wieloma opowieściami, bo jest jak ten ogród, do którego weszli mędrcy: każdy widział co innego.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, Księgi Jakubowe

“Być obcym to być wolnym. Mieć za sobą wielką przestrzeń, step, pustynię. [...] Mieć swoją historię, nie dla każdego, własną opowieść, napisaną śladami, jakie zostawia się po sobie.
Wszędzie czuć się gościem, domy zasiedlać tylko na jakiś czas, nie przejmować się sadem, raczej cieszyć się winem, niż przywiązywać do winnicy. Nie rozumieć języka, przez co widzieć lepiej gesty i miny, wyraz ludzkich oczu, emocje, które pojawiają się na twarzach niby cienie chmur. Uczyć się cudzej mowy od początku, w każdym miejscu po trochę, porównywać słowa i znajdować porządki podobieństw.
Trzeba tego stanu uważnie pilnować, bo daje ogromną moc.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, Księgi Jakubowe

“Czy ludzie niecierpliwi nie przypominają duchów, które nigdy nie są tu, w tym miejscu, i teraz, w tej właśnie chwili, ale wystawiają głowę z życia jak ci wędrowcy, którzy podobno, gdy znaleźli się na końcu świata, wyjrzeli poza horyzont.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, Księgi Jakubowe

“У тому, що ти чужий, є якась радість, привабливість. Це - наче ласощі. Добре воно: не розуміти мови, не знати звичаїв, блукати, як дух, серед інших - далеких, незбагненних. Тоді прокидається особлива мудрість: уміння здогадуватися, ловити неочевидне. Прокидаються кмітливість і уважність. Чужий віднаходить особливий кут зору і хоч-не-хоч стає своєрідним мудрецем. Хто переконав нас, що бути своїм - так добре і зручно? Лише чужий по-справжньому розуміє, яким є світ.”
― Ольга Токарчук, Księgi Jakubowe

“At the bottom of every frozen heart there is a drop or two of love―just enough to feed the birds.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“But the problem with readers, the idea we're given of reading is that the model of a reader is the person watching a film, or watching television. So the greatest principle is, "I should sit here and I should be entertained." And the more classical model, which has been completely taken away, is the idea of a reader as an amateur musician. An amateur musician who sits at the piano, has a piece of music, which is the work, made by somebody they don't know, who they probably couldn't comprehend entirely, and they have to use their skills to play this piece of music. The greater the skill, the greater the gift that you give the artist and that the artist gives you. That's the incredibly unfashionable idea of reading. And yet when you practice reading, and you work at a text, it can only give you what you put into it. It's an old moral, but it's completely true.”
― Zadie Smith

“Ото дивно: якщо ти зробиш людинi добро, вона тобi стає приємною. I навпаки, той, кому ти заподiяв щось зле, неприємний тобi.”
― Всеволод Нестайко

“Як же то приємно замість стелі бачити над головою бездонно-голубе небо і дихати свіжим вітром, що лоскоче тобі шкіру ніжним дотиком, і чути, як привітно шепоче листя на деревах, і відчувати під ногами пружну землю, і чепуляти вулицею без усякої навіть мети, і усміхатися без причини, просто тому, що світить сонце, що муркоче на призьбі кіт, що рохкає у калюжі свиня - що життя прекрасне!..”
― Vsevolod Nestayko, Тореадори з Васюківки

“It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Complete Prose Works Of Ralph Waldo Emerson

“То був саме той короткий період після переселення до нового міста і нової країни, коли людина почувається майже безсмертною, бо вважає, що її тут нічого не стосується. Щойно країна і місто перестають бути чужими, щойно людина запам'ятовує назви вулиць і вже не мусить питати, де тут пошта, а де центральна площа, починаються образи й приниження.”
― Міленко Єрґович, Srda pjeva, u sumrak, na Duhove

“He opened his damp eyes again to stare at the cross on the altar. He might not believe, but the cross meant something to him, nonetheless. It stood for Ted and Joan, for order and stability, but also for the unknowable and unresolvable, for the human craving for meaning in chaos, and for the hope of something beyond the world of pain and endless striving. Some mysteries were eternal and unresolvable by man, and there was relief in accepting that, in admitting it. Death, love, the endless complexity of human beings: only a fool would claim to fully understand any of them.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Running Grave

“Є миті, коли світ видається іншим. Не таким, як ми його звикли бачити зазвичай. І щось тоді коїться з людськими чуттями. Ніби хтось легко прочиняє двері в якусь досі небачену дійсність, у якусь казку. Ніби знову світанок настає. Не можна не любити світанку. У ньому стільки мудрості, стільки прихованих від галасливого повсякдення сил.”
― Андрій Зелінський, Семенові зорі

“I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“In the library I felt better, words you could trust and look at till you understood them, they couldn't change half way through a sentence like people, so it was easier to spot a lie.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had. Some people’s emanations are very strong, some people create themselves afresh outside of their own body. This is not fancy. If a potter has an idea, she makes it into a pot, and it exists beyond her, in its own separate life. She uses a physical substance to display her thoughts. If I use a metaphysical substance to display my thoughts, I might be anywhere at one time, influencing a number of different things, just as the potter and her pottery can exert influence in different places. There’s a chance that I’m not here at all, that all the parts of me, running along all the choices I did and didn’t make, for a moment brush against each other. That I am still an evangelist in the North, as well as the person who ran away. Perhaps for a while these two selves have become confused. I have not gone forward or back in time, but across in time, to something I might have been, playing itself out.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“Pillars hold things up, and salt keeps things clean, but it's a poor exchange for losing your self. People do go back, but they don't survive, because two realities are claiming them at the same time.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“I could have been a priest instead of a prophet. The priest has a book with the words set out. Old words, known words, words of power. Words that are always on the surface. Words for every occasion. The words work. They do what they're supposed to do; comfort and discipline. The prophet has no book. The prophet is a voice that cries in the wilderness, full of sounds that do not always set into meaning. The prophets cry out because they are troubled by demons.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“I would want kids to talk and write about how the book makes them feel, what it reminded them of, if it changed their thoughts about anything. I’d have them keep a journal and have them freewrite after they read each assignment. What did this make you think about? That’s what I’d want to know. I think you could get some really original ideas that way, not the old regurgitated ones like man versus nature. Just shoot me if I ever assign anyone an essay about man versus nature. Questions like that are designed to pull you completely out of the story. Why would you want to pull kids out of the story? You want to push them further in, so they can feel everything the author tried so hard to create for them.”
― Lily King, Writers & Lovers

“you get trained early on as a woman to perceive how others are perceiving you, at the great expense of what you yourself are feeling about them.”
― Lily King, Writers & Lovers

“I tell them the truth. I tell them I am thirty-one years old and seventy-three thousand dollars in debt. I tell them that since college I’ve moved eleven times, had seventeen jobs and several relationships that didn’t work out. I’ve been estranged from my father since twelfth grade, and earlier this year my mother died. My only sibling lives three thousand miles away. What I have had for the past six years, what has been constant and steady in my life is the novel I’ve been writing. This has been my home, the place I could always retreat to. The place I could sometimes even feel powerful, I tell them. The place where I am most myself. Maybe some of you, I tell them, have found this place already. Maybe some of you will find it years from now. My hope is that some of you will find it for the first time today by writing.”
― Lily King, Writers & Lovers